Odd And Interesting

In March 2011, a prisoner at the Beaumont prison from which an inmate escaped with the help of a cellphone last year has one of Texas’ worst track records for prison personnel bringing cellphones into the facility. David Puckett, aged 27 years old was serving his fifth year of a 30-year sentence for aggravated assault of a public servant out of Lavaca County in Texas.

Beaumont Prison Authorities haven’t said how they think Puckett obtained the smartphone he used to plan his breakout and meet up with a female admirer in Omaha, Nebraska where he was recaptured a little over week later.

“There obviously is a big difference between an officer who is found with their personal phone in their front pocket because they forget to take it out, and an officer who has six phones and chargers taped to their stomach,” suggested an unnamed prison source.

Data has shown that over the course of a 10 year period more than 1,100 instances in which Texas Department of Criminal Justice employees were accused of breaking prison system rules by bringing cellphones such as iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One S etc or phone parts into prisons whether intentionally or accidentally. Some of those incidents include from the database: A chaplain at the Cotulla inmate transfer facility in South Texas tried to sneak in his cellphone inside his motorcycle helmet. A phone was found lying in a flower bed inside the secured area at outside Waco; another guard’s phone was found left in a bathroom at outside Huntsville. Even prison guards aren't' impervious because a lieutenant’s phone was found inside a boot when he left his uniform boots to be shined by an inmate at a prison north of Lubbock.

Well since this most recent escape escapade it's become a felony offense here to supply an inmate with a cellphone or a cellphone component. Texas prison employees are also forbidden by rule from bringing personal cellphones into a prison at any time. Texas State has also added additional security measures by “in the process of installing hundreds of video surveillance cameras which will assist in our efforts and serve as a further deterrent to individuals who are considering smuggling contraband into the facility.”

1) The World's Most Expensive Mobile Phone is a the iPhone 4S "Diamond Rose" edition boasts a price tag of £5 million, which currently translates to $8,184,968.42. The lucky purchaser or recipient of this astounding and very glittery cell phone will receive 00 individual flawless diamonds totaling over 100 carats, a rose gold Apple logo with 53 diamonds, and a single cut 7.4-carat pink diamond on the home button. Sigh.......I guess I'd better start saving my money now.

2) The first mobile phone call was in 1973 on a warm, sunny afternoon by Motorola General Manager Martin Cooper took to the streets of New York with a prototype mobile phone. The first phone call he made to was s Dr Joel S Engel of Bell Labs phone company. When Dr. Engel heard who was head of research at Bell Labs answered the phone call he was greeted by Martin Cooper's voice was delighted to be able to inform him that Motorola had officially created the first mobile phone. His exact words were, “Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cellphone, a real, hand-held, portable cellphone.”

3) The first cell phone launched in 1984 at a whooping cost of more than $3,995 -- which is about $9,000 today, accounting for inflation. However, a hand-held cell phone was a definite status symbol for all of those 1980s yuppie types because the DynaTAC appeared in Gordon Gekko's hands in Wall Street, and later, Patrick Bateman used one in American Psycho. It was also made famous by Zach Morris in the 1990s high school television series Saved by the Bell.

4) The first cell phone to be actually classified as a “Smartphone” debuted in 1993 at Florida's Wireless World Conference weighing a little more than a pound and featuring a PDA type look with an early LCD touchscreen display. The original press release stated, “Designed by IBM, Simon looks and acts like a cellular phone but offers much more than voice communications. In fact, users can employ Simon as a wireless machine, a pager, an electronic mail device, a calendar, an appointment scheduler, an address book, a calculator and a pen-based sketchpad all for the cool price of $899.” Oh and by the way only 2000 of these “Smartphones” were ever produced.

5) Germany's Friedhelm Hillebrand is credited with creating today's most popular Smartphone and cell phone feature i.e. the ability to text message or also known as the SMS texting system. Hillebrand created the concept of a 128-byte text message to be sent via the existing mobile phone network. In 1985 Hillebrand experimented with making notes on his typewriter to come up with the ideal message length: 160 characters.

6) With more than two-million mobile phone towers and antennas in the U.S, cell phone towers and antennas are often disguised as signs, clock faces, drainpipes, telephone poles, church and cathedral roofs and even weather vanes especially in our more urban areas. One of the most popular ways of disguising cell phone towers is in plastic trees. They're so popular websites like FraudFrond.com “pays homage to the fake trees that disguise our cell phone towers." World renowned photographer Robert Voit featured an entire exhibit dedicated to photographs of the fake cell phone tower phenomenon.

7) Experts has recently identified telephonophobia, nomophobia, frigensophobia and ringxiety as conditions that can affect the mobile phone users of our generation. Telephonobia is the fear of making or recieving phone calls, while nomophobia means no-mobile-phone phobia and is the is the fear of being out of contact either by your phone being lost by either dead battery or no cell phone service. Ringanxiety is when you hear (or feel) your mobile ringing when it's not (talk about cell phone obbession) and Frigensophobia is the fear that using your mobile is damaging your brain.

8) In 1986 Scott Jones an promising and upcoming a26-year-old research scientist at MIT, invented the modern cellular voicemail system over a pizza or at least while attempting to order a pizza. His business venture Boston Technology won bids to create the voicemail systems for the mobile industry's big names. Talk about getting a lucky break with such a useful idea.

9) The world's most popular phone is the Nokia 1100, a basic GSM candybar launched in 2003 and became the world's best selling mobile device ever with more than 250 million 1100s have been sold worldwide.

10) Mobile device users are seeing an increase in QWERTY keyboards that offer more intelligent software means that use textonym faux pas are now being replaced by auto-correct faux pas, but not before they made the crossover from mobile to real life.

Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse has just confirmed that his company will carry Motorola’s Photon Q LTE later this year. The new 4G LTE smartphone runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.4 on a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor. The Photon Q comes with a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 4.3-inch ColorBoost Display screen, a rear-facing 8MP camera with 1080p video capture, and a long-lasting battery (thanks to Motorola’s Smartactions app.)

The new Photon Q is expected to ship with NFC capability to power the new Android Beam data transfer service and Google Wallet mobile payment services.

This Android slider phone with a full QWERTY keyboard is perfect for the business community that has long been looking for a reason to retire those worn out BlackBerrys. The Photon Q is the latest 4G with a physical keyboard smartphone, joining the ranks of the Motorola Droid 4, Samsung Captivate Glide and Samsung Epic.

Like other Motorola phones, the Photon Q LTE will be environmentally friendly and ULE-platinum certified.

Sprint hasn’t mentioned a release date or pricing information for the Motorola device, but the company expects to make these announcements in the coming weeks.

Google has released the latest version of its Google Earth app with 3D imaging. You can download the app to the new iPad, iPad 2, iPod touch and iPhone 4S. The app is available in the iTunes store.

As Peter Birch, Google Earth product manager, blogged, “With today’s release of Google Earth for iOS you can literally fly through breathtaking 3D city landscapes and images and follow virtual tours of places you’ve never been — all with a simple swipe of your fingertip.”

Birch’s blog post highlighted the app’s Tour Guide feature that lets users browse through thumbnails to explore any city or landmark. Some of the photos are user generated.

Birch writes that Google is adding new locations “as fast as we can.” The cities that are 3D-viewable right now are Boulder, Boston, Charlotte, Lawrence (KS), Long Beach (CA.), Los Angeles, Portland (OR), San Diego, Santa Cruz, Tampa, Tucson, and the San Francisco Bay Area. On the international scene, the Google Earth app will show you Rome in 3D.

By the end of 2012, Google plans to have the 3D imaging available in metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people or more.

Smartphones are an essential part of our daily lives from driving, grocery shopping and talking or texting our loved ones. Smartphones are an integral part of our daily lives that we cannot live with or without whether we're a tween, teen, a busy mother on the go, a father recording his son's first home run or a grandparent’s joy at seeing photographs of their first grandchild. Smartphone applications are a reflection of that diversity and individuality of every Smartphone user from the most necessary to the funniest applications available for every Smartphone user. Here's a list of the Top 10 Funniest Applications for Smartphones:

1.) Pocket God is an episodic and exciting application available for Android and Apple Smartphones that allows its users or players to determine what type of God they would be if they were all powerful. Players can choose whether they're a benevolent or vengeful God of their very own island with up to six islanders per island, an availability of five different islands and a number of forces of nature are yours to control and manipulate. Pocket God is a fun application for any Smartphone user especially if you have a little time to kill, after all its not everyday your God of your own island.

2.) AgingBooth is your more than typical application that shows people what they might look like when they get older. AgingBooth was launched by PiVi & Co the creators of both FatBooth and BaldBooth, some of the most popular iPhone 4S application. Now AgingBooth for Android is available to download for free on the Android Market.

3.) The Moron Test is currently one of the best selling applications well...since the introduction of the Smartphone with millions of players worldwide. The Moron Test features simple, addicting gameplay, five sections featuring hundreds of fun puzzles and even hilarious characters, sound effects, and music.

4.) BaldBooth is similar to AgingBooth and instead shows the user what they might look like if they had no hair rather than simply being older. BaldBooth is a hilariously fun way to instantly make people bald on photo with your HTC OneX and other smartphone which can be shared with family, friends or colleagues via email, MMS, FaceBook, and Twitter.

5.) Talking Lila the Fairy will allow Smartphone users to discover Lila's world of magic and songs. Lila is a flower fairy that lives in a meadow who loves to sing and cast magical spells over the Smartphone users like Nokia Lumia 900, Galaxy S3, etc. Lila the Fairy can create flowers, animals, stars and other items with the help of her fairy dust.

6.) Talking Santa is a free Smartphone application that lets you tickle Santa and make him laugh, you can also poke or slap him but that may cause Santa not to give you gifts anymore. If you're nice to Santa by bringing him milk and cookies or naughty by running him over with a giant snowball will determine what types if any presents he brings you for Christmas.

7.) GhostRadar is a paranormal application for the Ghost-hunters in your life. The GhostRadar will continuously run sensors on your Smartphone to determine if there is anything strange happening around the user. GhostRadar applications has set the standard in ghost hunting because it analyzes the readings from sensors giving indications only when interesting patterns in the readings have been made and has a voice to let you know when interesting words have been detected.

8.) Talking Tom Cat is your perfect pet cat that responds to your touch and repeats everything you say. He can be especially fun for children and even allows you to record your own videos of Tom Cat and share them on YouTube and even Facebook.

9.) SackDude: If you're feeling a little stressed or a little irritable, Sack Dude is your interactive Smartphone stress ball. So if you’re having a rough day, just remember Sack Dude can be smacked, set on fire, tickled or electrocuted and is your perfect stress reliever.

10.) FatBooth: if you are feeling a little fat FatBooth will really show you might look like carrying those few extra pounds. Or if you are having a really bad hair day FatBooth could make you feel much better about how you look now.

Choices, choices, choices and oh so many choices what PC Tablet should I choose to own. Well let me help as here's a list of some of your many PC Tablet Options to own.

1.) Most PC Tablets have a screen ranging from 7- up to 13-inches with no definite static and blurry boundaries as Smartphone screens get larger displays. The Toshiba AT200 was released in January 2012 and features a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 TFT display, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 5MP rear camera, 2MP front camera and a decent array of ports including micro SD, USB and HDMI. The Toshiba AT200 is literally the world's thinnest 10-inch tablet with price tag between $399 to $499.

2.) The Sony Tablet Swas released in September 2011 featuring a unique design angle, styled to resemble a folded over paperback book and an Android 3.1 operating system. The Sony Tablet S also features other exclusive content including various for the Sony PlayStation titles which you won't get on other Android tabs. It also includes a very user friendly touch-screen and unique shape which definitely makes it a standout. Sony Tablet S& Sony Tablet S currently retails for $349 for 16GB and $429 for 32GB.

3.) The ASUS Transformer Pad 300 was recently release in May 2012 featuring the power of a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, a 10.1-inch display and 12 hour battery life. The tablet also comes with running Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box meaning it'll already up to date with most Android Operating Systems. The ASUS Transformer Pad 300 retails for $399, its price difference is most notable with when it comes to the materials used to build the ASUS Transformer Pad 300.

4.) The Apple iPad 2 is a favorite among many tablet users that was released in March 2011 that still features a top tablet experience with access to the Apple store and iTunes libraries. Unfortunately the iPad 2 is currently only available in 16GB and retails for between $399-$699 depending on your chosen iPad features.

5.) The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 was released in October 2011 featuring smaller and lighter Galaxy Tab 8.9 which is perfect for reading books, checking emails and browsing the Internet. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 is great for those who want an e-reader with extra media functions, or for those who are more weight than screen size Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 is perfect for budget friendly tablet shoppers ranging between $300-400 depending once again on your chosen features.

6.) The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was released in July 2011 and features 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) display, 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, 3.15MP rear camera with 720p video recording, 2MP front camera and the choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of internal storage. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 claims to be “smaller, thinner and lighter than the new iPad 3, and with a screen which matches the iPad 2 the Galaxy Tab 10.1 provides a real alternative in an Apple-dominated tablet market.” The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1retails for $399.

7.) The Samsung's Series 7 Slate features was released in September 2011 and features a powerful touch-screen Windows 7 PC, with a very Windows-8-like optional interface. The Samsung Series 7 S late isthe fastest Windows 7 tablet we've tested, and paired with its optional accessories providing one of the best tablet laptop experiences you ever have. However, its $1400 price tag may be a bit too expensive for most consumers.

8.) The ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 high resolution screen is a rival to any other PC tablet because of its sharpness and clarity display, the applications load exceptionally quickly and is described as being “a state of the art PC Tablet.” The ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 also features a Tegra 3 chip and 8-megapixel camera, but it adds a higher-res, 1920 x 1200 display. The ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700retails for $499 with some pending price cuts.

9.) The Toshiba Excite 7.7was just released earlier this year in 2012 featuring a AMOLED screen, a quad-core processor, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This PC Tablet also measures 8 inches wide, 5.31 inches tall, is about a fourth of an inch thick and is a lightweight contender at 0.77 pound which is lightweight and easy to handle. The display has a resolution of 1,280x800 pixels, which makes watching videos that fit its 16:10 aspect some of the best video you'll see on a PC Tablet. The Toshiba Excite 7.7retails for between $479.99-$599.99.

10.) The Samsung Galaxy Tablet 2 10.1 is the newest member of the Android Tablet family that was just released in summer 2012. The Samsung Galaxy Tablet 2 10.1features offers near-identical specs, including a 10-inch, 1280 x 800 PLS display, dual-core 1GHz TI chip, 1GB of RAM and a minimum of 16GB of internal memory storage as its predecessor the Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1. It also features a 1280 x 800 PLS panel and is slightly thicker 1.29 pounds / .41 inches thick vs. 1.25 pounds / .33 inches than its predecessor. The Samsung Galaxy Tablet 2 10.1retails for between $399-$499 depending upon your chosen memory chosen.

The best price out there for an unlocked GSM Samsung Galaxy Nexus just got even more attractive. Google dropped the price of the unlocked HSPA+ version of the Galaxy Nexus by $50 to $349 – comparable to what you’d pay for many devices on contract. According to the Google Play ad, the unlocked smartphone can be used on AT&T, T-Mobile, or “more than 200 GSM providers worldwide.”

Before those of you who already purchased your Galaxy Nexus from Google Play start complaining that your timing sucked, if you made your purchase within the 15 days prior to this price reduction announcement, Google will refund you the extra $50.

The Galaxy Nexus features a 4.65-inch 720p HD display and dual-core processor. It runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and will be one of the first phones to get the new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS next month. Orders for the Galaxy Nexus can be placed directly through the Google Play Store now.

One of the biggest banks in the world, Wells Fargo, has confirmed that the Apple stock deserves the “Outperform” rating and said that the next-generation iPhone “will be the biggest product launch in consumer electronics’ history.” We’ve heard that before.

And Apple rarely fails to disappoint consumers, reviewers or the investment community. The fall release is definitely going to make big news. iPhone 5 and the new iOS together are sure to create a feeding frenzy among new and old iPhone device owners.

Smartphone users who find themselves in the vicinity of dangerous weather will get a text message from the National Weather Service. The NWS’s new Wireless Emergency Alerts system is designed to get weather warnings to those not plugged into television or radio. Warnings will be delivered for impending rough weather due to tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, flash floods, extreme winds, blizzards, and ice and dust storms.

According to Amy Storey, spokeswoman for CTIA-The Wireless Association (the trade group that helped set up the system), “These alerts will make sure people are aware of any impending danger and provide them with the information needed so they can be safe until the threat is over.”

Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile will offer the service nationwide. To start, AT&T will only offer it in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Portland, Oregon but plans to add additional markets soon. Apple will support the service this fall. It’s not yet certain if older iPhones will get the text warnings.

Developers were first able to get their hands on the first iOS 6 beta version at the Apple WWDC earlier this month. Currently the latest version -Beta 2 is headed for those same hands.

The update features both performance updates and bug fixes. Address Book, Game Center, iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime, Maps and Safari have all received updates.

There’s a pretty cool animation used with Beta 2 that we wish would get used in app icons. When you download this update, you can see the gears moving within the Settings icon. That’s a lot more fun than just a static image.